


Forbidden by God and King

by MissingTriforce



Series: A Kinder Universe [8]
Category: Gehenna: The Final Night, Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Diablerie (Vampire: The Masquerade), F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oral Sex, Shower Sex, The Withering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:41:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissingTriforce/pseuds/MissingTriforce
Summary: Realization struck Cassandra like an arrow through the chest. She lifted her head so she could meet his red-gold eyes, and a silver glimmer of fear echoed in their depths. “Beckett, this isn’t the flu, is it?”He shook his head. “It is the Withering.”AU in which Caine gives a damn.
Relationships: Beckett (Vampire: The Masquerade)/Caine (Vampire: The Masquerade), Beckett/Original Malkavian Character(s) (Vampire: The Masquerade)
Series: A Kinder Universe [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645372
Kudos: 19





	Forbidden by God and King

Another successful night of wine, women, and song at Haven. Gladness flooded her veins as she entered her room and reached for the zipper on her dress. She had all the company she needed in the booth upstairs, so she had gifted herself a lone bed to sleep away the day in. She shimmed out of her slinky black number and shimmied into her oldest, most dowdy nightgown. The cotton and ribbons of it reminded her of her mother.

Cassandra had just finished putting on her cold cream (helped marvelously with taking off her makeup and moisturizing her skin) at her vanity when she happened to glance at her shrine to Caine. She had put fresh flowers on it only yesterday—this kind she hadn’t seen before, a sort of yellow with orange and red trim that reminded her of sunsets. As the first vampire, Caine probably hadn’t seen a sunset the longest of all of the Kindred, so she’d bought them from the street vendor, thinking to add cheer. People probably always brought him blood-red flowers, anyway. Assuming people brought him anything.

Her gaze drifted to the glass eyes of her doll, and the world shattered.

_Come, my mad daughter._

_A city with round towers like ice cream scoops, twisted off just so._

_Beckett, deathly pale, eyes closed, not breathing._

_Come._

_An apartment block. Numbers. Street signs. They whisper._

_Save him._

_I call you, Malkav. Give me of your body._

_A great tree against the sun! The roots!! They wither!!!_

Pain tore through her mind, and she couldn’t stop screaming.

#

She had never been to Moscow before. All that time she’d spent avoiding the East and coaxing Nikolai and Jeanette to avoid the Beckoning to the Gehenna War, and here she was in madness-driven fury, without a plan, without a ghoul, and without connection. She didn’t even know if the city was Camarilla. She only knew she had to find him.

Purchase a street atlas. Buy a cup of coffee. Sit down at a tiny table and examine the maps. Throw away the coffee. Flag a taxi. Do not meet the eyes of the driver. Tell him the address with a carefully crafted German accent to the Russian. Foreigner, but not that foreign. Watch the street, not the city. Even out the corner of eyes, the city was getting worse. Ignore the driver’s questions about if a lady really wants to be dropped off here. Pay him without comment. Get out. Walk at a _human_ pace. She wanted to run, she wanted to fly, but she couldn’t break the Masquerade to get to Beckett faster.

She broke the lock on the door.

A stake clattered to the ground. “Cassandra, what are you doing here?”

Beckett didn’t look himself. He was wearing ratty pajama bottoms, for one, and was leaning on the entrance way wall for support for second, and his long hair looked shaggy and—Cassandra whipped off her sunglasses—were those gray hairs at his temple?

Fright seized her, and she rushed to hug him close. He must smell the same at least—of leather and cinnamon and pages of books. He did—but then there was something underneath that. Something…sickly.

“Oof,” Beckett said. “Hello to you too. I thought you were staying in LA for a graduation.” He returned the hug, but his body leaned on her heavily, like he couldn’t support himself on his own.

Cassandra pulled back a little, and she saw tiredness in those red cat eyes. “You’ve aged,” she said in quiet voice. “Makes you look even more distinguished.”

He chuckled. “Why thank you.”

She wrinkled her nose. “And you smell like Elena’s grandchildren when they have the flu. You should be in bed.”

“Everyone’s telling me that, but I’d rather be out there, investigating,” he said, his smile warm and voice dry. “I don’t think bed rest helps at all.”

Cassandra tsked, and in a movement she knew the old Beckett would have been able to prevent, she swooped to carry him like a princess. Beckett made a noise that sounded like protest, but she ignored it to kiss him on the forehead. “My darling is the worst patient.”

“I haven’t been sick in three hundred years and fifteen years,” he grumbled.

“Be that as it may. Were you really going to stake me? I feel I should be insulted,” Cassandra teased. Leaving her luggage in the entranceway, she wound her way through the drab apartment. It was a two-bedroom, with a kitchen, a small living area, and a single bath. It was better than Beckett’s usual hovels. At least the mold was only on the ceiling.

The open bedroom door must be Beckett’s chosen sleeping place. If she needed further clues, the teetering mountain ranges of books would be it. She picked her way through with care and lay her lover back in his mess of blankets. Seeing no point in delaying the inevitable, she took off her coat, kicked off her shoes, and slipped into bed beside him. Beckett obligingly opened his arms to allow her to scoot close and place a head on his fuzzy breast. Cassandra nuzzled in.

“How did you find me?” Beckett asked in a low voice, like they were whispering secrets. The intimacy of it tickled. “I haven’t even announced myself to the society here. They’re still sore about the Baba Yaga business.”

“A message from Caine,” Cassandra said, equally quiet and soft. “A rather painful and specific one. He called me Malkav, like I was answering for a boon granted. Can you breathe for me, darling?”

Either he was very tired or he really had forgotten what it was like to diagnose an illness, because Beckett breathed without complaint. The breaths were sucking, shallow things and the sound and effort of them rattled his ribs. Cassandra pressed her ear closer, and she thanked every second devoid of the telltale bubbles.

“You don’t have pneumonia. Yet,” Cassandra said. She lifted her head and stretched delicate fingers across his forehead. Something sparked—a wobbly sort of feeling. “A fever is coming.”

“Your skills are wasted as singer. You should have been a mother all along,” Beckett huffed. The cherry glow of his gaze made her heart ache.

Cassandra stuck her tongue out at him. “Like it’s hard.” Then, her face grew serious, and she snuggled back into his side with resolution. “Tell me your other symptoms.”

Beckett fidgeted. Cassandra sensed the resistance almost like a physical thing pressing down on her. “Don’t make me seduce it out of you,” she said. To physicalize the threat, she licked his nipple and twined a finger around a curl of chest hair. “Darling, tell me.”

A sigh and a kiss on the top of her head. “I can’t melt into the ground anymore. Or turn into green mist. My hearing is…muffled too. I can barely hear the neighbors as is.”

Realization struck her like an arrow through the chest. She lifted her head so she could meet his red-gold eyes, and a silver glimmer of fear echoed in their depths. “Beckett, this isn’t the flu, is it?”

He shook his head. “It is the Withering.”

#

“Did you know that there is a positively lovely married couple just below you? I just popped down and would you know the husband is sick as a dog, poor dear. His wife and I had a rather nostalgic chat about home remedies and stuffed her husband full of them. In thanks, she very kindly let me draw some of his blood after three hours or so. It’s still got some body warmth to it, even.”

“So that’s where you’ve been,” Beckett said, sitting up in bed with a groan. Cassandra leaned down to grant him a perfunctory kiss and fluffed his pillows. He scowled and snatched her tie to finish the kiss properly. Only Cassandra Bonpensiero would wear a suit in Russia and look so fuckable in it.

“I’ve got the microwave heating it up to toasty temperature,” Cassandra said. “Would you like it in a large bowl or a tall mug?”

Beckett had been reading about colony collapse in zombie ants, but he put the book aside at the prospect of blood. “As long as you don’t give me a straw.”

“Oh yes, bad for the environment and all that. Though it’s really like nine CEOs that the Barons say it’s too big of a Masquerade risk to outright murder. I have not enjoyed the new ‘fire season’ in California, let me tell you.” Cassandra’s chatter lilted through the apartment as she fetched the blood and returned with a steaming bowl of red liquid. “I brought a spoon,” she added, flourishing the utensil with panache.

“Ah, the seductive and glorious life of a vampire,” Beckett said as he took the bowl and spoon. “I expect a sippy cup next.”

Cassandra batted him on the shoulder and sat down on the bed beside his hip. “Don’t be ridiculous—those aren’t microwave safe. At least the ones that I’ve seen, anyway.”

Beckett slurped his soup, which he knew annoyed her. She squeezed his knee in retaliation, which made him splutter because he was ticklish just there. “You would do that to an ill man?” Beckett glared, blood dribbling down his chin. He wiped his mouth, and Cassandra only hummed in satisfaction. “I call feel your humanity lowering.”

“My humanity level is fine,” Cassandra said. “How do you feel? Better?”

The bowl had a few swallows left, and Beckett polished it off with vigor. “Garlicky.”

Cassandra petted his leg. “That’s what you get for disproving we’re allergic, darling. Garlic is the best for colds.”

Beckett’s smirk faded. “You know what the cure for Withering is, and it’s not garlic.”

It could be some Malkavian otherness showing, or a trick of the light, but Cassandra’s angles sharpened. She clasped her hands together in a jerk and shook her head. “And how do you feel about diablerie, darling? When the alternative is to be ash and bones?”

Some part of Beckett regretted his own candor—he had ruined a perfectly good evening of banter and teasing. But he was a predator and that meant going for the throat of matters. So to speak. He looked Cassandra full on, shoulders straight, and not a tremor to be found when he said, “It is one threshold I have never crossed, and I do not wish to.”

Cassandra’s head hung, the curtain of her curls hiding her expression. She pressed her palms into her eyes. “This is why you sent Lucita and Anatole away, isn’t it? And why I wasn’t allowed to come on this adventure.” A pause. “I’m almost an Ancillae, you know. It’s next year. You’ll miss my death day anniversary party.”

Beckett shifted to put the bowl on the floor and get on his knees to better take Cassandra by the wrists. He tugged. “I know.”

“Your research isn’t finished. It’s never going to be finished.”

“I know.”

“In her letter, Lucita says she loved being Autarkis again. You won’t be there to help her bail on the Sabbat.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t part of Anatole’s Gehenna prophecies. He would rather greet Final Death than voice this and make it true.”

“But it is one of yours, remember?”

Cassandra’s face shot up, and Beckett was not a little taken aback when he saw the tear tracks. She had once explained to him that she felt the urge to cry as often as any human did, but only on especially feeling occasions did she allow it as a Kindred. “I didn’t want this,” she hissed. “I warned you _against_ this.” She ripped her wrists out of his grip and beat his chest. Hard. Perhaps she did not know her own strength anymore, or it was another sign of his waning, but he abruptly remembered what it was like to bruise.

“You didn’t believe me and now look! Don’t go to the East, I said. Who cares about Gehenna, I said! I told you years ago that the world is always ending! There will be another apocalypse! Another world war or whatever, but this—one—is—contagious! Stupid!” Her fists thundered against his ribs harder. Beckett let them rain and push him down.

“Cassandra, stop.” She flailed, and he growled in frustration that he couldn’t stop her. He could only throw up his hands to guard his face. “Stop, please.”

The hail of blows ceased. Beckett peaked open an eye.

“Oh…” she said a bit lamely.

Warmth flooded him. “It’s—” he choked. What?

“Beckett!” Her face paled in horror.

His stomach heaved. Cassandra’s hands turned him onto his side, and his vomit landed in the bowl. The blood…it was not as tasty the second time.

Cool fingers swept up his hair as his stomach emptied itself. Gack and spit and bile.

“Man alive,” he croaked. “I did not need a reminder of that part of being human.”

“How long have you not been able to keep blood down?” Cassandra said, the worry in her voice spiking like needles to pressure points. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“This is new,” he said, spitting. “I feel gross.”

“Your hair is awfully tangled,” Cassandra said in a distracted air. “I can—sit tight while I take this mess away and then we’ll clean up.”

“Huuuuuuuuggggggghhh,” was the only response he could muster. He buried his face in a pillow. If only suffocation would work.

“I can get more,” Cassandra shouted from the kitchen. “Better. Maybe you were wrong about the garlic, darling.”

“I’m _not_ wrong about the garlic,” Beckett groused into his pillow. “I tested it fifty different times.”

A far off “mmhmm,” was her only response, and Beckett dared not look up to see what was next in Cassandra’s roulette of ideas. Why was she bothering? They knew the illness. They knew the cure. All these measures were just…useless comforts. Maybe it would be easier—be less painful—if he crumbled on clean sheets, smelling like violets, his last sensation that of her arms. Better for him. Worse for her. There was a reason he had not called her or anyone else. Pretended he was fine and sent the others on their way, out into the world to spread their story.

He would have preferred to die running. Out in the moonlit fields of Yorkshire, perhaps, or darting through the Oxford grounds. A streak of furred silver. Never captured. Only vanished.

“Come, come,” Cassandra said, tugging on his shoulder. “The shower’s ready.”

Dizziness greeted him when he sat up, but he powered through it to standing. Cassandra fluttered behind him like the anxious butterfly she was.

With great care, he made it to the bathroom, rinsed out his mouth, and stripped to his skin. The water already fell in a soothing hiss and hum. But when he moved the shower’s sliding glass door, he straightened. “Cassandra,” he sighed, “why have you moved a plastic chair into our shower? I can stand on my own.”

She came up behind him to circle her arms around his waist, pressing her chest to his broad back. “You are literally an invalid using the wall to hold yourself up,” Cassandra said, and he could hear the eyeroll without having to see it. “Besides, I will make it worth your while.”

“Will you now?”

“Yes,” Cassandra said, and she placed a kiss on his shoulder bone to prove the point. “Now sit down.”

Careful not to slip, Beckett eased into the chair and under the warm spray. The hunger roiling in his belly calmed to a murmur under the suffusion of hot water. Simple pleasures can often be the best remedies. Under the water’s care, his muscles relaxed and sultry comfort unfurled in his bones. A sigh escaped like a blessing. His Gangrel cousins, the Mariners, who spent all their time underwater, might be on to something. Provided he was allowed to haunt a hot spring.

Cassandra stepped in behind him. Relaxation deepened as dexterous fingers worked shampoo into his skull. Tension leaked out of shoulders as she pressed a thumb into his nape. “You’re so beautiful,” Cassandra whispered.

“I should be telling you that,” Beckett said, his eyes drifting closed. “My dear.”

Cassandra chuckled. “A rare endearment from one so precious to me. I must be doing a good job.”

Beckett didn’t have the will to answer. Cassandra’s fingers went for broader strokes and tipped his head forward. Streaks of shampoo ran down his chest.

The comfortable silence and enjoyment remained while Cassandra repeated the process with conditioner—something that smelled like tea tree oil. Beckett had of course used this shower before, but something about Cassandra there, to have her hands on him, to be so utterly cared for—it made the experience luxurious and delicate. Intimate.

When a soaked Cassandra changed orientation and crouched in front of him, Beckett almost felt like he should say he didn’t need it, that she had rewarded him enough. But there was no saying no to Cassandra Bonpensiero when she had your cock in her mouth. Her head bobbed as she coaxed and teased him to fullness. He adjusted his legs wider, and she nipped his thigh in reward, sending a shot of arousal straight to groin.

He wasn’t going to last long like this—this sweltering, all-encompassing blush of rain and pleasure. The silky hollow of her throat, the curls plastered to her brow, the bewitching darkness of her eyes upon him. His breath hitched as their gazes caught. He was trapped and happy to be so.

She swirled her tongue around his head and licked his slit without breaking eye contact. My God, he was being debauched by her, utterly ruined and spoilt. She swallowed him down again and hummed and with agony he came.

The shower water drummed on as Cassandra licked her lips, leaned up, and kissed him with those siren lips. He had once witnessed her sing a room to a standstill, and at this moment that power had never felt more real and visceral. She brought him to a standstill too.

“Beckett,” Cassandra breathed. “I don’t want you to go.”

His logical mind wanted to remind her that she had her immortal family, her faithful ghoul Sergio and childe Zelde, and Elena’s brood of humans. That was an awful lot of people for the average Kindred, and Cassandra would get on just fine without one lone scholar. They had traveled seven continents together, longer and farther than any humans. She would recover. She would be fine.

But his logical mind was not in control.

As one, he and his Beast kissed her, devoured her mouth; dominated her tongue. His hands framed her face and dragged her close. He wanted. He wanted her skin to skin, to curl up inside her and roost; to smother her in his scent. His cock stirred back to life. The water fell, and they scrambled like he was dying in the next minutes. Like the only thing saving him was to be inside her.

Cassandra sunk onto him, and her entrance was already soaking, slick and fevered. She rocked forward, and if Beckett didn’t care if the whole apartment complex fell down around them, so long as she did that again. She obliged him over and over and over. Made it better when she placed hands on his shoulders and dug her nails in. His claws scratched down her back, and Cassandra keened. The smell of her, of arousal, of himself, of blood swam in his nose, and he licked a stripe through her breasts. He gripped her plump ass to help with rhythm, to build the fire higher, to let the desire roast and scald him.

He kissed every inch of skin he could reach, and her nipples pebbled and stood. With a cry, she came, and he caught every sound. She rolled her hips forward thrice more, and he saw white.

When he blinked back to awareness, Cassandra was leaning over him, breathing heavily, her arms stretched out straight behind. He ran soothing hands down her back, which had already healed, and her response was to nuzzle under his chin.

“Who’s someone you hate?” she asked.

Beckett was so startled by the question he laughed. “Vladimir Putin, I suppose. You know I try to stay neutral in these kine conflicts, but in recent years it’s been hard to ignore. Any high-ranking member of the Trump’s party would also do in a pinch.”

Cassandra muttered something that sounded like “too far,” but Beckett dismissed the notion in favor of kissing the pout off her mouth.

“The water’s going to get cold soon,” Cassandra said. “Let’s get back in bed.”

After a rinse, Beckett was escorted out of shower, rubbed all over by a fluffy cotton towel he did not remember buying, thoroughly burrito-ed in said towel, and then placed strategically on the bed. “I’m going to comb this mane you’ve been developing,” Cassandra explained. “No arguments.”

“Fine,” Beckett grumbled. “You get to listen to me think through my latest observations and findings on this Gehenna then.”

“Perfect.”

They spent an hour like that, and a comfortable cloud of domesticity—a particular cloud that Beckett had come to associate as unique to Cassandra—settled over them. He really had let his hair grow too long, almost to his waist. He wasn’t ever offended when Kindred mistook him for a woman, though. They usually corrected themselves after they heard his deep voice or they realized they were talking with the mysterious Cuthbert Beckett, Noddist and scholar. If anything, he was rather flattered. Cassandra and Lucita were women, after all, and they had many admirable qualities.

One of those said qualities was Cassandra’s ability to draw a sense of home around her, like drawing a blanket up to one’s chin on a chilly night. The scent of cleanliness, the feeling of soft, warm skin, the gentle tugs as she undid a tangle, even the thrum of his own voice: they built a barrier around them. They were safe, barricaded here against the world.

“You have found us, daughter.”

Beckett glanced up. “Ah, Kapaneus, you’ve returned—”

An ear-piercing shriek split the air, and Beckett whipped around to watch Cassandra scramble across the sheets and fall on the opposite side of the bed. Terror blanched her face, her eyes wide as dark planets as she looked at Kapaneus. She spider-scuttled backward and into the corner. “Nononononononono, quietquietquietquietquiet—”

“Cassandra!” Beckett launched himself after her, cursing his weakness when his legs gave out and he was forced to crawl. “Cassandra, stop!” Her hands pressed hard against her skull. To his horror, she scratched deep gouges into the sides of her head.

Bright red blood sprayed across his face. His Beast howled. Teeth. Claws. Fur. He spun on Kapaneus. Attack.

“We have no need for that.” A will not his own rammed into his brain, pressed him down to submission, lowered his head to a whimper. “Calm, Beckett. My mad daughter.”

Beckett blinked the red from his vision. His claws receded, and he felt calm. He sat on the floor like a schoolchild. There was no other way to feel. No other possibility.

Cassandra hiccupped behind him. A shaking body covered his back and wrapped her arms around his middle. “‘You will meet him. You will walk with Caine.’ I said so, didn’t I.”

“Don’t be foolish, Cassandra. This man only thinks himself Caine. He told me and I laughed in his face. He’s not actually the physical...” Beckett swallowed. Maybe it was a bit trite now. If a childe of Malkav and prophet of Gehenna said it was Caine, it was likely Caine. He was too weak to bear the burden of denial now. So much for the metaphor theory. And he’d been traveling with him for weeks. “I’m so stupid.” He rubbed his eyes with his palms. “I have been asking the wrong questions.”

“Being a legend does not exclude a minor stupidity,” Caine said. “Come. I have brought blood.”

“He can’t drink it, Father,” Cassandra said. She still hid behind Beckett’s broad back. “He threw up the last one.”

“This is the best blood. An aristocrat theologian with multiple doctorates and the glow of true faith about her.”

Beckett said, “We’ll see how it goes, shall we?”

#

It did not go well. Beckett threw the whole lot up an hour later. While Father helped him clean up in the bathroom, Cassandra went outside for a smoke. She still liked the spins, and the moon was a beautiful crescent tonight. She blew rings like vows towards the mistress of the illusion, after which her clan and the wolves took their names.

_We have found the Father!_

_Woe, woe, woe! We are all damned!_

_The Wanderer comes home to smash the house!_

_Husband of Lilith!_

_Seed of valleys, roots of tree, crumbler of mountains!_

_MURDERER_.

“Shut up,” Cassandra hissed. Ever since she’d laid eyes on the Dark Father, the Cobweb had exploded in activity.

_We must meet. We must gather. A great gathering of corpses!_

_The old alliances! Call forth their chains, made of blood and bone!_

_We must keep the Ventrue out!_

_Salut sisters!!! Setites!! Our soul twin Toreadors!!!_

_WhereWhereWhereWhere_

_It will be all right._

_Lover of Gangrel, Kisser of Toreador, Daughter of Ventrue, Aunt of Brujah, Sister of Tremere—spill prophecy forth!!!_

_Heh, we knew before the Nossies._

“Malkav’s childer have never been quiet,” the deep voice said. The balcony creaked. A frigid finger touched her brow.

The Cobweb went silent.

Cassandra’s eyes flew open, startled. She hadn’t had her head to herself in almost one hundred years. “How is Beckett?”

“He is dying. The fever will come tomorrow.”

Cassandra’s hand shook as she took another drag of her cigarette. “I have a plan.”

#

The next night, he woke up with his teeth chattering. “Cassandra,” he called.

Instantly, arms were around him, cradling him, shushing his noise. She felt impossibly warm to him. Burning, even. His whole body shook and shivered.

“Beckett, you’re burning up,” Cassandra’s voice said, somewhere near. He opened his eyes, and Cassandra gasped. Her hand moved from testing his forehead to pushing his bangs back. “Beckett, did you know you have blue eyes?”

“Blue?” Beckett said. That wasn’t right. “I’d forgotten.”

His brain felt swaddled in a thick, hot electric blanket. Only dull thoughts vaguely floated in the river of his mind. A river. He’d lived near a river as a boy. His eyes had once been the same color as the river.

“Yes, they’re lovely, but I find myself preferring your usual silvery red. You’re losing your Mark of the Beast.”

“I used to live near a river,” he tried to explain. “In Oxford.”

“Beckett, you’ve chosen a very poor time to open up about your past. I do want to hear it, but I have to go out tonight.”

“Out?” He tried to make the melting brain mush order itself into thoughts. God, he was so hungry. “Don’t go.”

But already her burning warmth was leaving his bed. He followed the white moonscape of her form as she dressed. “Father will look after you.” She stilled and eyed him. “Are you sure I can’t offer you some blood? Mine, perhaps?”

“Caine kindly donated some to me before you joined us,” Beckett said. “Didn’t stop the symptoms.”

Apparently, there was enough spark still in him to smirk. Cassandra’s jaw dropped. “Are you telling me,” she pinched the bridge of her nose, which she only did when she was really annoyed, “you _slept with the progenitor of all vampires_ and I am only hearing about this _now_? _”_

“Hah,” he said. “Beat you to it.”

Cassandra threw up her hands. “I thought we were friends, darling! You should have told me the minute I walked in the door. That’s amazing and I want to hear every detail, but _later_.” A breeze through the room, a smoothing back of his hair, a kiss on the forehead, and she was gone.

#

Cassandra returned near dawn, exhausted and hungry. She would have to visit the neighbors downstairs tomorrow. The hush of the dark apartment soothed her nerves. It would be all right. She would _make_ it all right. Reality would bend before she did.

No one was in the kitchen, or living room, so she ghosted into Beckett’s bedroom. Caine was lying in bed with his back against the wall and Beckett’s head in his lap. His broad, blunt fingers in Beckett’s hair reminded her of a master and his favorite dog. Not that she would dare say that aloud.

“He sleeps,” Caine said.

She swore, every time Caine spoke, it felt like someone was walking across her grave. Cassandra only nodded. They still had time.

While torpor was the still the sleep of the dead, Cassandra had the impression that she slept fitfully. Her dreams were invaded by voices, tumbling over her like a waterfall: desires, plots, and news as the word of Caine spread through the Cobweb and Malkavians sang to those around them. She even thought she heard Nathan swearing a blue streak. Cassandra woke up with an admonishment on her lips.

Having slept in the second bedroom alone, she dressed with determination and peeked in on Beckett and Caine. The boys were awake—Cassandra ducked out. Caine was straddling Beckett and pinning his wrists down. Well.

“Return,” Caine called. “The Beast has taken him.”

Cassandra flew to Beckett’s side. The once noble scholar thrashed and snarled against Caine’s grip. “It is the hunger,” Caine explained. “You need your blood for your task, so I will donate. You must hold him down.”

“I-I’m not strong enough to hold him down,” Cassandra said, wringing her hands.

“He is like a fledging now. You can,” Caine nodded. “I will get off, and we will change places.”

“Okay,” Cassandra said, still unsure.

There no time for further deliberation. Caine released Beckett and climbed off with blinding quickness, and Cassandra called on her power to pounce. Beckett kicked her in the stomach, but Caine was right—it barely registered as she landed, caught his arms, and shoved him back onto the bed. Beckett, or rather Beckett’s Beast, screamed in frustration.

“You see,” Caine said.

Beckett wheezed out of effort, and his gaze held no recognition of her, even as she loomed over him. New tiny bright gray lines streaked his hair and his claws—his claws were gone. A second Mark in as many days. This loss was almost more shocking. She’d never seen Beckett with regular human nails. The dull pink keratin made his hands look alien, like they weren’t a part of him, as if she’d never kissed those knuckles a hundred times.

“Hold still and don’t breathe,” Caine said. “You must not frenzy.”

Cassandra licked her lips and nodded. Caine rolled up his sleeves and pressed his wrist to Beckett’s mouth. Fangs instantly elongated, and Beckett bit Caine hard. Cassandra wished she could dull her hearing, so she did not have to hear the awful suckling sound.

Beckett stopped fighting. His body relaxed under her, and his hands opened and closed out of reflex instead of attack. Several minutes passed, though it felt like an eternity of agony.

Slowly, so, so slowly, Beckett found his way back. Soul flickered back into his strange blue eyes. Cassandra released his arms. “I should go,” she said.

“He will be well for tonight,” Caine said. “Go, daughter.”

He was. But the next night, he was delirious, calling out for her or Anatole or Lucita or Aristotle. The night after, he was a wolf, breathing death rattle breaths and curling in on himself. Like that would contain the pain.

#

This wasn’t what dying had felt like the first time. That had been by quick and violent means. Now he floated between consciousness and sleep, some place drenched in blood. He’d drunk so much of it, and yet he hungered for more.

Blood theft did not hold the same sin it did when Beckett was alive. When he was a boy, kine regarded blood closer to how Kindred did: it was the sacred essence of a person, what flowed inside and defined them. Too much of it, they grew ill. Too little, they frittered away. To steal blood was unthinkable. Witches had to be burned at the stake because it was believed they ate child flesh and drank their innocent blood. How little he knew then. How fond he was of nighttime walks. Best time to think.

Kine understood so much more now. Blood was donated, collected, and shared. People had different types, different gifts. To give blood to a person was an act of intimate kindness. Match to match. Like to like. Especially if they hungered, if they had no other choice, if they were injured. He was hungry. Caine had fed him, but the thirst burned his throat. Dried him out, made his body fissure and flake, split his nails, crumbled his fur until the pale, furless substitute remained.

Cold and soft. The sheets smelled like soap, and he shivered. It felt like his bones were stretching out of his skin, breaking through the cracks. He couldn’t hold himself in. This dying wasn’t the same as the last time. No heartbeat to stop, so it went on and on and on.

Violets. He smelled violets. He must have cataracts now, because he could only see the shadow of her. “Cassandra.” She was back—her shadow approached the bedside. Or he was hallucinating.

“It’s me, Beckett. I brought you a gift.”

A gift? She slipped into bed beside him, and it was like snuggling against a star. So hot he thought he would boil away to air.

Something pressed against his mouth. Food? He was so hungry. His teeth extended without his permission and with easy slice, someone was sharing with him. A Kindred being kind. Caine, perhaps? He had done it before.

“Drink, Beckett,” Caine said. “Do not waste Cassandra’s gift.”

This blood tasted sweet like melodies, and he was a deaf hearing song for the first time. Vitality flowed through him, moved his bones back where they belonged, closed cracks, and blew tumbleweeds from his mind. It awakened the telescope of his muscles, zinged through his dusty arteries; soothed the discontent he’d inherited from first bite. His hands moved to grip whoever’s arm this was and adjusted position for better, more—he needed it, he wanted it, he didn’t want to die, not really, he wanted to live to learn and watch and discover and love.

“Keep drinking. That’s it, darling,” Cassandra said—he could feel her brush the hair from his face; he could smell the violets and grave soil; he could see the curls of her hair and worry in her expression. He swallowed another gulp, and higher thought returned. Casandra must have found another stopgap. Or no. She had been gone. This was too much—he was drinking from someone and it had been too long. Oh God, who was he murdering?

Beckett tried to push the arm away, but Caine pressed it down onto his face, made him choke. “I will drag you back to the unliving. God and the Devil cannot have you. You are mine.”

Caine’s will pressed down on him like a sledgehammer to a paper crane. Beckett could only hiss and drink. That was the only action possible. He drank, drank, and drank, and strength brewed like darkness within him. Potency and power. The noises of the neighbors all around, the distant screech of bats, the will to bend metal raw-handed. His teeth sharpened—here lay a lesser god once again.

He spit the ash out of his mouth and immediately sat up. “What is going on? Who did I just devour?”

Tears glistened down Cassandra’s cheeks, and she didn’t touch him. He didn’t think he could handle it if she did. Anger, joy, and relief were a confusing maelstrom. “Take a breath, darling.”

“You have devoured an evil man,” Caine said, face betraying no emotion. “The world is better off without him.”

Beckett snarled. “Who are the damned to judge that?”

“The damned are best at recognizing when evil walks the earth,” Caine replied. “You just consumed Vladimir Putin. Cassandra said you hate him.”

“ _What?_ ” Beckett whipped back to Cassandra, who nodded. He could barely wrap his head around this. “Explain.”

“Well, I’ve been working on my Obfuscate, you know,” Cassandra said. She wrung her hands out of nerves. “His security is laughable when one is invisible, silent, and dead. He hasn’t had Second Inquisition Hunters update his systems. I tracked him for a few days, learned his routine, and figured out a plan. You _said_ you hated him.” Cassandra looked at him with big, pleading eyes. “Caine broke the power generators to Putin’s home and I cast Nightshade just in case. Cameras should see nothing. They won’t even know he’s gone for a few days. I put up an illusory double. We can leave the country.”

Beckett wanted to refuse to acknowledge the region in his chest that was swelling with idiotic, unstoppable love. He framed Cassandra’s face with his hands and kissed her soundly. “This is the biggest, most gaudy Masquerade violation I have _ever_ heard of.” He cradled her. “How could you be so stupid, my dear?”

“I love you,” Cassandra said, placing her hand over his.

Beckett bumped their foreheads together. “I suppose if I don’t voice my affections now, when will I ever? I love you.”

They breathed together.

“We shall go to Japan, and then Alaska,” Caine said. “We can hide in the hinterland until the hubbub ends. Then, we will gather.”

#

The wind and snow shrieked across the tarmac. Beckett’s private plane and his ghoul Cesare waited, but it would not carry him—it would carry her home.

Caine waited at the treeline. This state forest’s distant, emergency airfield would see a lot of action soon. Cassandra was confident most of LA Kindred society—if not all society wholesale—would uproot themselves to attend upon the Dark Father, to be present at this gathering. The type of meeting Father wanted—a Convention, really—hadn’t been seen in an age.

But first she had to say goodbye.

“Tell me you’ll be careful,” Cassandra asked again. “You won’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“I’ll try to save any moronic activity for when you are present, yes,” Beckett said, smirking. The crinkles around his eyes told her he was amused—but so familiar a gesture turned unsettling when those eyes were blue. His body had returned to the original age of its Embrace, and his strength to that of an Elder, but his characteristic Marks had yet to return. If Beckett was careful, if he never frenzied, would they ever?

As if he’d sensed her thought, Beckett burrowed his hands deeper into his pockets. They both wore thick winter coats, the tendrils of fur collars drifting in the wind. She sighed, and the sound blew far.

She had to make herself move. But the knowledge of what they’d done together, of what she’d forced him to do, of their history and of their future rooted her here. Tethered her to him. In a flash she understood how Rochester and Jane Eyre had felt, saying a long cord bound their hearts together, and the deep fear that if they separated, it would snap.

“Cassandra,” Beckett said. “Fetch your family, but return to me.”

He stepped forward and, blue or not, his gaze pinned her down. Helpless as a rabbit before the wolf, she could only shake as Beckett kissed her. His marking was soft and gentle and thorough—exactly right to melt her insides and reform them again full of ache and longing.

When he stopped, she kept her eyes shut tight, unwilling to let any other sensation in. “I have met an immortal whose mother stood up to God themself in the Garden of Eden, yet I cannot get you out of my blood, my heart, my bones.”

Beckett’s chuckle was warm. “I’m _that_ good in bed.”

Laughter burst out of her and, with it, her stress disappeared. It would be all right. She would see her lover again. Caine made their fate, and, from the shadow of the pine trees, he looked pleased at their kissing.

“I’ll see you soon,” Cassandra promised. Beckett nodded, and with a whirl, she boarded the plane, towards their future.


End file.
